Cee-Lo Green has spoken about the massive success of his foul mouthed single ‘Fuck You’.
Swearing isn’t big, and it definitely isn’t clever. But in the right hands swearing can express more than the most verbose statements, with a quick f-word helping to express a thousand different emotions.
Case in point? Cee-Lo Green. The American soul singer loaded his new single ‘Fuck You’ onto the internet last month, enjoying near instant global success as the video became a viral sensation.
Re-titled ‘Forget You’ for commercial airplay, the track’s mixture of self-deprecating humour and petulant back-biting is difficult to resist.
Speaking to The Guardian, Cee-Lo Green admitted that the track would only work in certain hands. “It wouldn’t work for just anyone,” he laughed.
“Some people have misconstrued Bruno’s contribution as him writing the song for me. If he knew the song was gonna be a big hit, he’d-a wrote it for himself! Nobody else would’ve got away with it but me” he continued.
“Look at me! I’m not ideal image-wise, I don’t think. I get a chance to stand out there and redefine what’s doable. I am a fuck you – that’s why the song works.”
Despite the upbeat nature of his music, many of Cee-Lo’s lyrics deal with quite serious, melancholic topics. On the Gnarls Barkley track ‘She Knows’ the Southern singer dealt with the death of his mother.
“That song is about possession,” he said. “My mother, being a prized possession of mine, and vice versa; and then me being possessed by her spirit. I understood her wanting to move on – not give up, but move on.”
“She could’ve died immediately in the accident, and I can’t say that I would have reacted as positively to that. But to watch her suffer for a few years straight – and watchin’ her bein’ brave enough to make a sound decision to move on – I now believe that that was merciful on me.”
Cee-Lo Green is due to release ‘Fuck You’ on October 4th.
